Neil Findlay: the Labour leadership candidate whose focus is social justice

Scots Labour leadership candidate Neil Findlay has promised to build 50,000 affordable homes if he is elected leader and wins the next Holyrood election.

The Lothians MSP said Scotland was facing a “housing crisis” and needed tens of thousands of family homes for rent.

Launching his leadership campaign in his home village of Fauldhouse in West Lothian, Findlay said a Labour party led by him would also aim to replace the minimum wage with the living wage and make sweeping changes to health and social care. Mr Findlay said there needed to be a debate about how Scotland paid for its public services with a reconsideration of universal benefits such as free university tuition and prescriptions.

The Sunday Post can reveal more than 1,000 people have joined Labour since the leadership race started and former bricklayer Mr Findlay is confident he can beat rival Jim Murphy and win over these members having secured most of the big unions.

Mr Findlay said: “There is a housing crisis and we have to build a lot more if we are to solve it. There are 150,000 on waiting lists, which is not acceptable. That’s the equivalent of a city the size of Dundee.”

The housing programme would be funded through the increased borrowing powers coming to Holyrood as well as forcing the big public-sector pension funds to invest in “social investments” such as housing.

In an interview with The Sunday Post, Mr Findlay said Scottish Labour had a job to do in terms of speaking to Yes voters and convincing them the party could deliver the change they wanted without separation.

He said: “The sands have shifted over the referendum. I think the public have moved the theme of the referendum was social justice.

“I did 63 public meetings during the referendum. Social justice was there every time ‘we want a fairer Scotland’ and ‘how are you going to tackle poverty?’.

“No side of the referendum had a monopoly on the issue of social justice but the Labour Party has to be at the vanguard of improvements to social justice. Many of my friends voted Yes for two reasons social justice and disappointment with Labour. They voted out of frustration because we weren’t seen as bold enough.

“We’ve got to speak to the 45% of Scots who backed independence as well as the 55% who didn’t. We’ve got to speak to them and say we have the answer to the problems here.”

Mr Findlay claimed that “clear policy positions” would propel his party back into power. “When people know what we stand for it will be different,” he claimed.

Labour’s health spokesman also said a strategy to end poverty in Scotland would form part of his 2016 manifesto.

He said: “It is shameful that families in our country cannot afford to feed their children or heat their homes and have to rely on food banks. A national strategy to end poverty in Scotland will be at the heart of our 2016 manifesto when I am Labour leader.”

The archaic leadership voting system means that trade unions have around a third of the votes, parliamentarians another third and ordinary members the final third.

Jim Murphy is favourite in the leadership race but his campaign has been hampered by the fact none of the big trade unions has backed him bar steel union Community.

Mr Findlay has nearly every union supporting him and yesterday secured the backing of Mr Murphy’s union, the GMB. The Lothians MSP also says he is making progress with MSPs, MPs and MEPs with “quite a few undecided”, he claims.

The biggest battle is for the votes of the rank-and-file members, with Mr Findlay encouraged by the surge in membership numbers. It is understood more than 1,000 people have joined Scottish Labour in the past fortnight though the party still refuses to reveal how many members it has in total.

Mr Findlay said: “There is a significant number of people joining. It is very interesting. People in my own community are telling me they have joined and I think the three candidates should be encouraging as many people as possible to join and get involved in the election.”

Mr Findlay said the party needed to sort out its internal problems, including the “working relationship with colleagues in UK Labour” but it wasn’t Labour’s most pressing problem.

He explained: “Work has to be done on party structures etc. It would be naive to suggest otherwise. However, the priority has to be the General Election and the 2016 Holyrood election. The last thing Scotland needs is a Tory government at Westminster. It would be a disaster for social justice.

“The General Election is about David Cameron and Ed Miliband, who is going to be Prime Minister after the election. That is the choice people need to make.

“It is a stark choice and if we have the SNP trying to use the General Election to take people away from that choice, then it can only be bad news for the most needy in our country.”